From February 18, 2002 to February 21, 2002, the Washington Times
ran a series of articles by Steve Miller on the changing economic status
of blacks in America. He drew on two sources to document this: statistics
from the 2000 census, and personal interviews. The purpose of the articles
was to simply attempt to reverse the widely held view that blacks are
living in poverty, victims of racism.

Mr. Miller points out that "Black medium household income grew 15
percent between 1989 and 1999, compared with 6 percent for white families.
Median income for blacks grew to $30,439 from $22,974 in 1993, a 32 percent
leap compared with the increase of 14 percent for whites during that period.
The number of black-owned firms increased 26 percent from 1992 to 1997,
compared with a 7 percent increase for U.S. firms overall."

The series of four articles are very interesting in the raw numbers from
the census figures, and in the personal stories of successful blacks,
but something struck me while reading this. If blacks are becoming more
diversified in their economic situations, why aren't they more diversified
politically? Over 90 per cent of blacks vote Democratic, and nothing seems
to be changing that.

There is a recent book written by Debra Dickerson, an African-American,
called An American Story. She begins by describing her family:
"Fundamentalist Christians, they opposed abortion, supported capital
(and corporal) punishment, kept hunting guns, disapproved of welfare recipients,
unwed mothers, and those who didn't work." This sounds like a pretty
right-wing family, but listen to her mother explaining politics to a young
Debra: "Democrat is what you are. Democrats'll let the little man
have something. Caint have much as the white man, naturally, but they
will let us ordinary folk get somewhere. Republicans don't want nobody
else to have nothin'." Here was a black family that had values associated
with conservatives, but turned to the Democrats when they voted. Even
if some minorities think Democratic policies are wrong, the perception
is that they care, and Republicans don't.

For those blacks that are conservative, the Republicans have the issues,
but they don't seem to know how to connect them issues with African-Americans
and other minorities. For example: School vouchers. A recent report done
by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies states that, "On
the issue of school vouchers...blacks and Hispanics favor vouchers by
solid majorities." If any party is seen to be associated with vouchers,
it's the Republicans. Bush ran on it as part of his education package.
But when I hear Republican leaders talk about vouchers, it sounds like
they're trying to convince me instead of those who will be affected. They
speak in terms of theories such as: vouchers will force public schools
to compete for students, so in the long run we will see an improvement
in all of our schools, and so on. This is fine, but why aren't they going
into the inner city and telling parents, "If you vote for me, I'll
work to get you vouchers that will help get your children out of bad schools
and into good schools right now!"? (The fact that President Bush
has already abandoned vouchers has to be seen as just another insincerity
on the part of Republicans.)

To further illustrate the Republican's problem with minorities, let me
quote from Hasting Wyman's Southern
Political Report. In an effort to attract minorities, "...periodically,
the GOP announces a 'big tent' strategy... Far too often, however, the
GOP's well-intentioned expansion gets sidetracked when the party is tempted
by the short-term gains of...polarization. In 1998, for example, the Georgia
Republican Party made a major effort to appeal to black voters, who make
up about one-fourth of the state's electorate, and recruited more than
20 African-Americans to run for office across the state. But the effort
came to naught when Guy Millner, the GOP's gubernatorial nominee, decided
to focus on Democratic ties to prominent black political leaders."
Does the Republican Party get it?

You may ask, why should Republicans care about a group that hardly ever
supports them? The same census that provided Steve Miller with his story
has another story to tell: Our country is becoming more diverse with minorities
an ever-larger proportion of our population. If the Republican Party doesn't
start capturing African-Americans and other minorities, it will be doomed
to be the minority party.

One hopeful note: A couple of weeks ago August 7, 2002, Mr. Miller, again
in the Washington Times, had a column titled "Republicans
push minority candidates." He wrote: "The Republican Party says
it has the largest-ever field of non-incumbent minorities seeking top
offices this fall." As David Bositis, executive director of the Center
for Joint Political and Economic Studies notes, "Having candidates
is different than having voters," but perhaps this is a start. The
question now is, will the GOP again be "tempted by the short-term
gains," and, once again, feed the perception that they don't care?